Friday, December 22, 2006

Five Christmases ago, I wrote this for The Big Issue. Enjoy it, and have a very happy christmas.

PANIC STATIONS. You've left it too late again. The shops are shut, you're half-cut and you haven't got a single present. But all is not lost. Adam Macqueen reveals the secrets of late-night Christmas shopping at the 24-hour garage.

Next year it's going to be different. Next year I'll buy everything from the sales in January and have it wrapped and gathering dust on top of the wardrobe for 11 full months. I'll post my cards in time and won't have to cross out the message inside and write 'Happy New Year' instead. I'll be that smug git who blithely says 'Oh, I got all mine online; I can't bear the crowds in the shops, you know.' Anything to avoid this horrendous last-minute rush.

It's 10pm. For the purposes of our exercise, it's Christmas Eve, no shopping days left till Christmas, and I'm slightly drunk. My mission: to buy presents for my entire family in the space of one hour, using only the retail outlets that will be available when staggering out of the pub on Christmas Eve. That's right, I'm off to the all-night garage.

Staggering up to the forecourt I reject the assorted barbecue materials on offer - I know I'm desperate buy you can't really buy someone coal for Christmas, even if they have been naughty. There's a bag of firewood though - if you screw up your eyes you could mistake it for a selection of yule logs. I can take them back to my parent's house and we can do... whatever it is you're supposed to do with a yule log.

Then the automatic doors glide back to reveal a shopping wonderland. Unfortunately, it falls rather short in the festive-gift department. There's not even a sprig of tinsel to be seen. But it is open, and that's the main thing.

I start off in the munchies section for no better reason than it's nearest to the door. Hobnobs do not a thoughtful present maek, even if they do come in a special resealable pack. But with a bit of lateral thinking... selection packs! That essential part of every 1970s Christmas, scaled up to adult size so that my nostalgia-freak student brother can make himself sick before lunch just like in the old days. Jammie Dodgers, Wagon Wheels, Custard Creams and Bourbons. But best of all, rather than a crappy nylon net stocking, his selection pack will come wrapped in a festive BP carrier bag. Anyway, the £20 I'll slip in for booze, drugs and whatever else students spend other people's money on should keep him happy.

Right, sister... she's a girl, so she's going to want something half-decent. I stop in front of the magazine rack. One copy of Marie Claire isn't going to do it... but 12, spread out throughout the year, might! And best of all, if I can just tear the subscription form out without the security guard seeing me, I don't even need to buy this one! Even better, the form offers subscriptions to otehr mags from the same company, so Golf Monthly and Homes And Gardens will sort out my uncle and aunt respectively.

Then there's their repulsive snotty son who'll be slouching his way through Christmas day with us. What do 15-year-old boys like? Sod it, I'll just get him some porn and fags, at least they should keep him out of the way for most of the festivities and avoid family arguments. I toy with the idea of asking the cashier which particular grumblemag he thinks would most appeal to a 15-year-old, but the conclusions he's likely to draw are just too alarming, so I just chuck in a couple along with a novelty mobile phone cover that will serve as the present he actually gets in front of his mum. Am I the coolest cousin in the world or what?

Brothers-in-law aren't a problem; they have their own section marked 'car care'. I toss a chamois leather and a novelty wind-screen-scraper into the basket. The sad thing is, he will actually think these are good presents. As for my baby niece, she gets a selection from the soft toys most garages keep for panicking divorced dads on their way to weekend access.

So, just my parents left. When you ask my dad what he wants for Christmas he always just says 'peace and quiet'. I consider getting him some blank tapes, but in the end the two universal truths of Christmas win out: one, that dads are utterly impossible to buy presents for, and two, that as long as there's enough booze, everyone's happy. I don't know when garages started selling alcohol, but I'm bloody glad this one does. A bottle of whisky, some port, a red and a white will mean he can potter about pouring things for people and not get in the way of my mum with the turkey.

Now then, mother, mother. A bunch of flowers will do as a start, and they'll be nice and fresh tomorrow morning... well, as fresh as garage flowers ever are, anyway. Some chocolates, obviously, and we'd better have a tin of Quality Street because that's the law at Christmas - but what the hell will I give her for a main present? Last time I asked her she just said 'Dont worry, it's enough just to see you all', which is mum-speak for 'you'd better get me something nice or I'll go all tearful after the first sherry.' My life could just be saved by the odd selection of CDs that all garages stock in accordance with the 'people who like petrol also like soft rock' formula... there we go, the latest Ruth Rendell read by that nice Jan Francis off the telly. Everybody's happy.

Mission accomplished, in only 38 minutes. In fact, if I get a move on putting all this in carrier bags, I can probably still make last orders...

Friday, December 15, 2006

Managed to turn this (click the title, I haven't worked out how to embed the links yet - it can be my new year's resolution) round for The First Post yesterday within 90 minutes of the report's publication.

I'm not a Diana obsessive, honest. I never had any particularly strong feelings either way about the woman when she was alive. It's just... as a journalist who actually bothers to do his research, I can't help getting cross about the complete bollocks that still gets written about her elsewhere. Still, it ain't going to stop any time soon, whatever Lord Stevens says.

Look out for more - and an interesting revelation about that financial link we've always suspected between the Daily Express and Al Fayed - in the Christmas Eye that's out next week.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

It's the biography of a Victorian businessman (the founder of Lever Brothers, later Unilever), but don't let that put you off. He was barking mad, slept in an open air bedroom, had flamingoes and zebras in his garden, locked his diabetic brother in a madhouse, went surfing in Hawaii in 1892, forced his employees to take lessons in latin and housewifery and do gymnastics and sacked them if they had "a wife of objectionable habits." The Mail on Sunday said it was "wonderfully entertaining", Waterstones said it was "joyously funny", and the first nob joke is on page 9.

Click on the title above to read some of the other things nice people wrote about it when it came out. And then click on the link on that page to buy a copy, and Amazon guarantee to deliver it in time for Christmas. It's ideal for dads, or even brothers-in-law. Much better than anything golf-themed from Marks & Spencer.

I think this was probably the most downright irresponsible story the Sun have printed since Kelvin MacKenzie's famous "straight sex cannot give you Aids: Official" front page back in the 80s. Christ, they make me cross sometimes.

From the current Eye:

"KILLER PLAGUES" screamed the Sun over a calm and rational editorial on the "migrants' Aids epidemic threat" to Britian.

"The problem is set to hit crisis point when Romania and Bulgaria - nations with some of Europe's highest Aids rates - join the EU next year. Workers from these countries are expected to flood into Britain," the paper warned.

According to the latest statistics released by the Joint United Nations project on HIV/Aids, the estimated adult HIV prevalence in both Bulgaria and Romania is less than 0.1% - the lowest rate recorded anywhere in Europe and Central Asia. While there are currently 59,000 HIV-positive residents of the UK, the number of Bulgarians living with HIV is estimated at "less than 500".

Ian liked this story so much he printed it twice, on pages 4 and 6 of the current Private Eye.

JOINED-UP OPPOSITION

23 November: Conservative party launches "inner tosser" advertising campaign to persuade young people that getting into debt is a bad idea28 November: Conservative party reveals to Electoral Commission that it owes £35,315,060 to 62 creditors

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About Me

I'm one of the team of hacks at Private Eye magazine, where I've worked on and off since 1997. I'm also an editorial lieutenant on Popbitch (not sure what it means: we made up the job titles in the pub). I've written for a number of other newspapers and magazines, been a co-presenter on LBC, a regular newspaper reviewer on Sky News and written a biography of the Victorian businessman and philanthropist William Lever. My first novel, Topped of the Pops, a comedy thriller, was to be published in May 2008, until the publishers went bust. From 1999-2002 I was deputy editor of The Big Issue.